Still don't get it

Everyone knows Bejeweled, everyone has played Bejeweled but everyone may not know that the third game of the series is coming out soon.

Which has (apparently) taken three years to make.

Three years.

Bejewelled. The game where you line up 3 jewels that look the same.

Three years.

How does that work?

Looks mentaler, want it morer

Little Big Planet Beta 'Tutorial' HD

Looks mental, want it

Mirror's Edge 'Flight Level' gameplay HD

This is why I hate not having the Internet at work

Missed this yesterday. Very annoying. Reaaaally looking forward to this game and by the time I had got home the site handing out the keys had pretty much exploded.

Same thing with Battlefield Heroes, I always miss them handing out beta keys by like an hour or something.

Why does the Internet hate me so?

Film review: Pineapple Express

Pineapple Express @ IMDB

So now we have a trend. First Hot Fuzz, then this and Tropic Thunder: action
films are back in the mainstream.

I, for one, have no problem with this. Guns rule.

What we have in this films is a good old genre bender: we have the
relationship issues of a Knocked Up (Seth Rogen) crossed with the stoner
comdey of a Superbad (James Franco) and a dash of any cop thriller from the
late 80s you care to mention (all the guns they have at the end).

The basis of the film is the friendship between the two main characters
played by Rogen and Franco. Rogen, we all know his stick and it's still
working. Now Franco, last time I saw him he was angsting it up in Spider-Man
3 so I was little unsure. But to my surprise, he's a great comedy actor.
They hold the film together and (obviously) get most of the best lines.

The only issue is going to be if you go along with the film. If you enjoyed
the humor from something like Superbad then you're going to love this film.
It's not something that's going to cross barriers.

So while the film may not appeal to everyone, if you go with it it's a great
ride. It's also really suprisingly violent but in a good way. It even ticks
the two boxes marked "car chase" and "shoot out" admirably.

In a word? Fruity.

Proof Japan makes the best TV shows

Oh, God

Really? Is that really the case? Is it?

Whoever made that call needs to stand up and explain themselves.

Goddamnit!

Boo!

They still proper freak me out

Anyone watch Fonejacker last night?

Basically, there were these adverts around the show:



Appears to be some kind of Zombie Big Brother and it proper freaked me out.

Then I went to the website and clicked the big red eye to get the trailer and was a bit disappointed: here was me thinking the whole thing was going to be like watching an episode of BB only with zombies and instead it's all filmy. I would have been much more interested in the just being done with the usual BB cameras as the atmosphere it created in the little trailers proper freaked me out.

Then I looked into it a bit more and found out Charlie Brooker wrote it so everything might be okay.

Best Party Ever

Awesome.

Film review: RocknRolla

RocknRolla @ IMDB

Oh, Guy Ritchie. You poor fool.

I remember when Lock, Stock first came out and he was hailed as some kind of genius saviour of the British film industry. And, in a way, he was. His debut film really reinvigorated British films and got people interested in them again.

But, at the same time, he killed his career.

Harsh? No, because he was now typecast and stuck in the 'Geezer' genre of film. Snatch, despite being a good film, didn't do anything to dispute this.

His attempts to move beyond this, Swept Away and Revolver*, failed miserably.

So, we come to Rocknrolla. Lock Stock 3? Pretty much.

We have the usual group of wideboys and gangsters duckin' and divin' and what not. The plot is pretty much dead in the water, something to do with property and a missing painting and the Russian mafia.

This is the main problem with the film: the plot requires a lot of talking. So for the first few reels nothing happens. Once the film decides that, you know what, the plot doesn't really matter then it becomes enjoyable.

And say what you like about him, but Guy Ritchie can make a good looking film. It does look great with the high point being a botched heist followed by a chase in the middle of the film. That bit is really good.

It tries, it really does. Everyone is being cheeky geezer cockney sparrows but they are all enjoyable performances. The problem is that Guy Ritchie (as the writer) seems enamoured with these rambling monologues that try to say profound things but tend to ramble on. If the film was as tight and as focused as the heist in the middle it would have been a great film. But it isn't. It's good.

The end teases a sequel. A bad thing? Possibly not.

In a word? Geezer.



* Now, I haven't seen either of these films but the reviews I have read have been scathing. In fact, Mark Kermode referred to Revolver as one of the worst films to be released in the entire 21st century, despite it being only 2008.

Oh, come on

Seriously? Is that your best excuse? Global Warming. Nice.

I'm going try that one. "Sorry dear, couldn't get the shopping you wanted, global warming".

That one would get me a smack in the mouth, I'm sure of it.

Film review: Surfs up!

Surf's Up @ IMDB

You know what, I always thought this was a spin off of Happy Feet.

Apparently it was developed entirely separatley at the same time, just pure co-incidence. It was, of course, the dancing penguins that got all the press whilst this film was kind of pushed to the side.

This is a shame really as in many ways this is the superior film. It even got nominated for an Oscar for the Best Animated film.

So, we have penguins. In this case, surfing penguins. So far so cute. But here's the rub: the film is setup like a documentary as we follow one penguin's dream to enter a big surfing contest named after his surfing idol, Big Z.

The documentary setting immediatley sets it apart from all the other kids CGI films and gives it a breath of fresh air. They throw in roughed up old footage, photos, everything to complete the illusion of this being filmed on the hoof and assembled in an edit suite.

The voice acting is good (Jeff Bridges gives us a penguin version of The Dude, Shia LeBouef does his usual thing) and the humour is funny. It must have helped that one of the directors worked on Toy Story which further proves that it takes Pixar (or even someone who used to work there) to really understand CG kids films and make them into something special.

Very enjoyable.

In a word? Tubular.

Who decided to call it Big Bang Day?

Hopefully seeing The Pineapple Express tonight, that is of course if the world doesn't end.

Good luck everyone!

I don't know what's going on, but I want it

Uh oh.

A trifle worrying. Thankfully The Duchess isn't in the model series affected so we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

That is, of course, on the assumption that the screen isn't going to break again.

Didn't believe my Speed Racer review?

Argue with that, if you dare.

Wrestling is awesome

Stop the chairs. Heh.

Now that's sad

The trailer voice man is dead.

Boo!

Film review: Hellboy II The Golden Army

Hellboy II: The Golden Army @ IMDB

How many comic book films have we seen this year? It's crazy. It wasn't that long ago they on the level of something like Steel. Something to make fast, on the cheap that would soon vanish into rental Hell.

Now we get films like Hellboy II that are practically baroque works of art.

I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit.

Hellboy returns, now with a girlfriend but still the same gruff attitude and some more bad guys to beat up.

That's my main issue with the film; the bad guys. Not that I'm bashing Luke Goss, you understand. But you never got a good feel for them, they didn't dominate the story. The fairy tale creatures and the world created is great but there was just something missing in the last third.

But it's still a great film. It's truly a character piece wrapped up in comic book clothes with a big red horned guy at the centre.

Ron Pearlmen is great as Hellboy, he fits the character like a glove and it shows. The support is also great, they bicker like real people and no one lets the side down. Everyone has room to shine, especially Doug Jones under his own latex as Abe Sapien. It's also really funny. The action is good too.

You can tell where the budget really went though: set and chacater design.

It's stunning. There a ton of animatronic characters and practical effects that look amazing. The chacaters visit a Market full of trolls and Lord knows what else that really makes the film. A whole world is created from pretty much the ground up that is faultlessly presented. It's nothin like what you would normally see in the cinema, let alone just comic book films. It's surreal and grotesqe and visionary.

It also bodes well for the director's version of The Hobbit.

So I really liked it. While it's not perfect I wouldn't hear a word against it. It's also nicely teed up for a third film that I'm very much hoping will be made.

Also, it has the best use of a Barry Manilow song for quite some time.

In a word? Devilish.

They should have called it The Webminator

This looks interesting, at least in a Google-Trying-To-Take-Over-Everything-But-Look-Nice-About-It kind of way. They even roped in comic auteur Scott McCloud to promote it.

It's probably been coming a while and I will try it to see how all the other Google bits and bobs fit into it. But I've already got Firefox and can't get rid of Internet Explorer and I downloaded Safari as well and I quite liked the look of that social web browser so do I really need another one?

Major problem? Chrome. Not a great name.

What I really need is a bigger hard drive for my PS3. Those demos fill it up super quick.

Film review: Speed Racer

Speed Racer @ IMDB

Remember when The Wachowski Brothers ruled the world? This will be the 18 months of so after first Matrix when everyone thought they were amazing and it sold loads of DVDs and everyone was happy.

Two sequels later and everyone hates them.

Shame. Because everyone seems to be lining up to give Speed Racer a kicking when it doesn't really deserve it.

The eponymous Speed Racer is race car driver in a racing obsessed world living in the shadow of his brother, Rex Racer, who died racing in a race car accident. After making a name for himself on the track the big teams want to hire Speed to race for them. But are they all they seem?

The problem we have, not just with this film but with The Wachowski's themselves, is that no one will tell them no. The Matrix made sooo much money they just do what they want and no one tells them otherwise. Sometimes this is good, sometimes this is bad.

It's good in this film because no one else would make a film that looks like this. The original anime the film is based is replicated on the screen to an amazing level. This isn't just the vehicles, which we will get to later, but the overall look of the film. Colours pop off the screen like nothing else. It looks amazing.

And then the cars start racing.

What they have done is taken the car chase sequence from The Matrix Reloaded and taken it to insane levels. The cars spin around the track, leap in the air and barrel roll. It's totally seamless and totally amazing.

What is not so good is when they start talking. Whilst the dialogue isn't as cringe worthy as some of The Matrix Revolutions, it's not great. It's supposed to be a kids film but when you get scenes digging into the intricacies of corporate sponsorship and it's place in sport, I started zoning out and I'm an adult.

And then there is Spritle.

Every now and then you get a film character that seems to have been placed into a film with the sole intention of bringing the whole thing crashing to the floor. There was Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element, Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace and now Spritle.

He's supposed to be comedy value. I understand this. He's teamed with a monkey, and I have no problem with monkeys. But whenever he crops up he just destroys the pace of the film, all of his jokes fall flat and he is very annoying. If I were to ever buy this on DVD I would rip it onto my computer, edit him out and then burn it back on to DVD. Not even the bit when he's playing Freebird could save him.

And that's the problem: if they had a producer that would stand up to them things like this wouldn't happen and the film would be a lot better for it.

I really enjoyed it. It doesn't deserve the kicking it's had. My son sat through the whole film which is a not inconsiderable 137 minutes long. Not a masterpiece but it's not as bad as the Matrix sequels. Which is always a good thing.

In a word? Zoom.